This invention relates to performance recording/reproducing apparatus for recording and reproducing information for controlling electronic instruments to generate music.
Performance recording/reproducing apparatus utilizing playing information of an MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) have been proposed in, for example, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. Sho-63-193193. The apparatus records playing information input from a keyboard of an electronic instrument or a computer in the form of digital event data showing the operation of keys on the keyboard and reproduces the playing information to output it to a computer or any other sound sources.
In the general performance recording/reproducing apparatus above, each channel consists of playing information input from each of plural electronic instruments; that is, each channel is assigned to playing information for an electronic instrument. The playing information is generally recorded on a recording track or a merge track set in a memory of the performance recording/reproducing apparatus with corresponding time data.
A performance of music is recorded in the following steps. A channel of playing information sent from an electronic instrument is recorded on a recording track. The playing information on the recording track is reproduced, checked, and then transferred to a merge track. A channel of playing information for another electronic instrument is recorded on the recording track, reproduced, checked, and then merged with the information on the merge track. In the above manner, plural channels of playing information are successively transferred to the merge track to be merged thereon; the whole performance of music is thus completed.
The above method, however, gives great inconvenience and trouble when some correction or modification is required for only part of the playing information merged on the merge track. Once plural channels of playing information are merged on the merge track, it is impossible to pick up only a specific channel of playing information to be corrected or modified. Correction or modification of playing information thus means performance of music from the beginning once again. It accordingly takes time to complete recording of performance.